Item 1. Business.

General

Pebblebrook Hotel Trust is an internally managed hotel investment company, organized in October 2009 to opportunistically acquire and invest in hotel properties located primarily in major U.S. cities, with an emphasis on the major gateway coastal markets. As of  December 31, 2015 , the Company owned interests in 37 hotels, including 31 wholly owned hotels with a total of 7,408 guest rooms and a  49% joint venture interest in 6 hotels with a total of 1,787 guest rooms (the "Manhattan Collection joint venture").

Substantially all of the Company’s assets are held by, and all of the operations are conducted through, Pebblebrook Hotel, L.P. (our “Operating Partnership”). The Company is the sole general partner of the Operating Partnership. At December 31, 2015 , the Company owned 99.7 % of the common limited partnership units issued by the Operating Partnership ("common units"). The remaining 0.3 % of the common units are owned by the other limited partners of the Operating Partnership. For the Company to qualify as a REIT under the Code, it cannot operate the hotels it owns. Therefore, the Operating Partnership and its subsidiaries lease the hotel properties to subsidiaries of Pebblebrook Hotel Lessee, Inc. (collectively with its subsidiaries, “PHL”), the Company’s taxable REIT subsidiary (“TRS”), which in turn engages third-party eligible independent contractors to manage the hotels. PHL is consolidated into the Company’s financial statements.

Business Objectives and Strategies

Acquisitions/Investments

We invest in hotel properties located primarily in major U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, Naples, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Santa Monica, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., with an emphasis on major gateway urban markets. We believe these markets have high barriers-to-entry and provide diverse sources of meeting and room night demand generators. In addition, we also opportunistically target investments in resort properties located near our primary urban target markets, as well as in select destination resort markets such as south Florida and southern California. We focus on both branded and independent full-service hotels in the “upper upscale” segment of the lodging industry. The full-service hotels on which we focus our investment activity generally have one or more restaurants, lounges, meeting facilities and other amenities, as well as high levels of customer service. We believe that our target markets, including the major gateway markets, are characterized by high barriers-to-entry and that room-night demand and average daily rate ("ADR") growth of these types of hotels will likely continue to outperform the national average, as they have in past cyclical recoveries and growth periods.

We perform and utilize extensive research to evaluate any target market and property, including a detailed review of the long-term economic outlook, trends in local demand generators, competitive environment, property systems and physical condition and property financial performance. Specific acquisition criteria may include, but are not limited to, the following:

We believe that upper-upscale, full-service hotels and resorts and upscale, select-service hotels located in major U.S. urban, convention and drive-to and destination resort markets are likely to generate the most favorable returns on investment in the lodging industry. Nationally, new hotel supply growth remains at historically low levels with demand growth continuing to exceed supply growth, causing industry occupancy levels to increase. However, supply growth has increased compared with

earlier in the economic cycle, particularly in certain of our markets, as construction financing has become more available and fundamentals continue to strengthen. This may impact the ability of our hotels to increase room rates if increases in room supply become more meaningful.  We believe that portfolio diversification will allow us to capitalize from growth in various customer segments, including business transient, leisure transient and group and convention room-night demand, as well as mitigate the negative impact from increases in hotel room supply.

We generally seek to enter into flexible management contracts, when possible, with third-party hotel management companies for the operation of our hotels that provide us with the ability to replace operators and/or reposition properties, to the extent that we determine to do so and align our operators with our objective of maximizing our return on investment. In addition, we believe that flexible management contracts facilitate the sale of hotels, and we may seek to sell hotels opportunistically if we believe sales proceeds may be invested in other hotel properties that offer more attractive risk-adjusted returns.

We may engage in full or partial redevelopment, renovation and repositioning of certain properties, as we seek to maximize the financial performance of our hotels. In addition, we may acquire properties that require significant capital improvement, renovation or refurbishment. Over the long-term, we may acquire hotel and resort properties that we believe would benefit from significant redevelopment or expansion, including, for example, adding rooms, meeting facilities or other amenities.

We may consider acquiring outstanding debt secured by a hotel or resort property from lenders and investors if we believe we can foreclose on or acquire ownership of the property in the near-term. In connection with our acquisitions, generally we do not intend to originate any debt financing or purchase any debt where we do not expect to gain ownership of the underlying property. Additionally, we have co-invested, and may in the future co-invest, in hotels with third parties through partnerships, joint ventures or other entities, acquiring non-controlling interests in or sharing responsibility for a property, partnership, joint venture or other entity.

Asset Management

While we do not operate our hotel properties, both our asset management team and our executive management team monitor and work cooperatively with our hotel managers by advising and making recommendations in all aspects of our hotels' operations, including property positioning and repositioning, revenue and expense management, operations analysis, physical design, renovation and capital improvements, guest experience and overall strategic direction. We believe we can add significant value to our portfolio through our intensive asset management strategies. Our executives and asset management team have significant experience in hotel operations and creating and implementing innovative asset management initiatives.

We have developed strategic short- and long-term capital investment plans to enhance our hotels' profitability through the strategic use of, among others, expansions, additions, renovations, technology upgrades and modifications, and energy efficiency improvements. We are also focused on revenue and expense management at our properties. We work closely with our hotel operators to evaluate optimal market mix and pricing strategies, ensure quality staffing and appropriate management focus, implement best practices to minimize expenses and aggressively monitor and evaluate our hotels' operations and performance.

Financing Strategies

Over time, we intend to finance our long-term growth with issuances of common and preferred equity securities and debt financings having staggered maturities. Our debt includes a senior unsecured credit facility, term loans, unsecured notes, mortgage debt secured by our hotel properties or our leasehold interests on our hotel properties subject to ground leases and may include other unsecured debt in the future.

We anticipate using our senior unsecured revolving credit facility, term loans, senior unsecured notes, common and preferred equity issuances, and mortgage debt financings to fund future acquisitions as well as for property redevelopments, return on investment initiatives and working capital requirements. Subject to market conditions, we intend to repay amounts outstanding under our senior unsecured revolving credit facility from time to time with proceeds from periodic common and preferred equity issuances, long-term debt financings, cash flows from operations and opportunistic or strategic dispositions.

When purchasing hotel properties, we may issue limited partnership interests in our Operating Partnership as full or partial consideration to sellers who may desire to take advantage of tax deferral on the sale of a hotel or participate in the potential appreciation in value of our common shares. To date, we have not issued any limited partnership interests in our Operating Partnership to purchase hotel properties.

Competition

We compete for hotel investment opportunities with institutional investors, private equity investors, other REITs and numerous local, regional and national owners, including franchisors, in each of our target markets. Some of these entities have substantially greater financial resources than we do and may be able and willing to accept more risk than we can prudently manage. Competition generally may increase the bargaining power of property owners seeking to sell and reduce the number of suitable investment opportunities offered to us or purchased by us.

The hotel industry is highly competitive. Our hotels compete with other hotels, and alternative lodging marketplaces, for guests in our markets. Competitive factors include, among others, location, convenience, brand affiliation, room rates, range of services, facilities and guest amenities or accommodations offered and quality of guest service. Competition in the markets in which our hotels operate includes competition from existing, newly renovated and newly developed hotels in the relevant segments. Competition can adversely affect the occupancy, ADR and room revenue per available room ("RevPAR") of our hotels, and thus our financial results, and may require us to provide additional amenities, incur additional costs or make capital improvements that we otherwise might not choose to make, which may adversely affect our profitability.

Seasonality

Demand in the lodging industry is affected by recurring seasonal patterns which are greatly influenced by overall economic cycles, geographic locations, weather and the customer mix at the hotels. Generally, our hotels have lower revenue, operating income and cash flow in the first quarter and higher revenue, operating income and cash flow in the third quarter.

Regulations

Our hotel properties are subject to various federal, state and local environmental laws. Under these laws, courts and government agencies have the authority to require us, as owner of a contaminated property, to clean up the property, even if we did not know of or were not responsible for the contamination. These laws also apply to persons who owned a property at the time it became contaminated, and therefore it is possible we could incur these costs even after we sell a property. In addition to the costs of cleanup, environmental contamination can affect the value of a property and, therefore, an owner's ability to borrow using the property as collateral or to sell the property. Under the environmental laws, courts and government agencies also have the authority to require that a person who sent waste to a waste disposal facility, such as a landfill or an incinerator, pay for the clean-up of that facility if it becomes contaminated and threatens human health or the environment.

Furthermore, various court decisions have established that third parties may recover damages for injury caused by property contamination. For instance, a person exposed to asbestos while staying in a hotel may seek to recover damages if he or she suffers injury from the asbestos. Lastly, some of these environmental laws restrict the use of a property or place conditions on various activities. An example would be laws that require a business using chemicals (such as swimming pool chemicals at a hotel property) to manage them carefully and to notify local officials that the chemicals are being used.

We could be responsible for any of the costs discussed above. The costs to clean up a contaminated property, to defend against a claim, or to comply with environmental laws could be material and could adversely affect the funds available for distribution to our shareholders. Prior to closing a property acquisition, we obtain Phase I environmental site assessments, or ESAs, in order to attempt to identify potential environmental concerns at the properties. These assessments are carried out in accordance with an appropriate level of due diligence and generally include a physical site inspection, a review of relevant federal, state and local environmental and health agency database records, one or more interviews with appropriate site-related personnel, review of the property's chain of title and review of historic aerial photographs and other information on past uses of the property. We may also conduct limited subsurface investigations and test for substances of concern where the results of the Phase I ESAs or other information indicates possible contamination or where our consultants recommend such procedures. However, these Phase I ESAs or other investigations may not reveal all environmental costs that might have a material adverse effect on our business, assets, results of operations or liquidity and may not identify all potential environmental liabilities.

We believe that our hotels are in compliance, in all material respects, with all federal, state and local environmental ordinances and regulations regarding hazardous or toxic substances and other environmental matters, the violation of which could have a material adverse effect on us. We have not received written notice from any governmental authority of any material noncompliance, liability or claim relating to hazardous or toxic substances or other environmental matters in connection with any of our properties.

Our properties must comply with Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (the "ADA") to the extent that such properties are “public accommodations” as defined by the ADA. The ADA may require removal of structural barriers to access by persons with disabilities in certain public areas of our properties where such removal is readily achievable. We believe that our properties are in substantial compliance with the ADA and that we will not be required to make substantial capital expenditures to address the requirements of the ADA. However, noncompliance with the ADA could result in litigation, retrofit costs and imposition of fines or an award of damages to private litigants. Additionally, properties which we may acquire may not be in compliance with the requirements of the ADA, and we endeavor to identify such noncompliance prior to our acquisition. The obligation to make readily achievable accommodations is an ongoing one, and we will continue to assess our properties and to make alterations as appropriate in this respect.

Tax Status

We have elected to be taxed as a REIT under Sections 856 through 860 of the Code. As a result, we generally are not subject to corporate federal income tax on that portion of our REIT taxable income that we currently distribute to our shareholders. A REIT is subject to numerous organizational and operational requirements, including requirements concerning the nature of our gross income and assets and specifying generally that we must distribute at least 90 percent of our REIT taxable income each year. We will be subject to federal income tax on our taxable income at regular corporate rates if we fail to qualify as a REIT for federal income tax purposes in any taxable year, or to the extent we distribute less than 100 percent of our REIT taxable income. We will also not be permitted to qualify for treatment as a REIT for federal income tax purposes for four years following the year during which qualification is lost. Even if we continue to qualify as a REIT for federal income tax purposes, we will be subject to certain state and local income, franchise and property taxes.

For us to qualify as a REIT under the Code, we cannot operate the hotels we own and acquire. Therefore, our Operating Partnership and its subsidiaries lease our hotel properties to our TRS lessees who in turn engage third-party eligible independent contractors to manage our hotels. The properties owned by the Manhattan Collection joint venture are leased to a lessee joint venture in which a wholly owned subsidiary of PHL owns a 49% interest. PHL is treated as a TRS for federal income tax purposes. The earnings of PHL are subject to taxation like other regular C corporations.

Employees

We currently employ 27 full-time employees. None of our employees is a member of a union; however, some employees of the hotel managers at several of our hotels are currently represented by labor unions and are subject to collective bargaining agreements.

Available Information

Our Internet website is located at www.pebblebrookhotels.com . Copies of the charters of the committees of our board of trustees, our code of business conduct and ethics and our corporate governance guidelines are available on our website. All reports that we have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") including this Annual Report on Form 10-K and our current reports on Form 8-K, can be obtained free of charge from the SEC's website at www.sec.gov or through our website. In addition, all reports filed with the SEC may be read and copied at the SEC's Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, D.C. 20549-1090. Further information regarding the operation of the public reference room may be obtained by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330.